The crowd went wild after hearing the heated conversation between Asha and Wynna. With all that shouting, their throats should have been sore by now—but of course, they could easily heal that with magic. Cheering for their chosen champions was much more important after all.

“Take this, you arrogant human!” Wynna roared once again.

She gathered much spiritual energy in her stomach until it glowed bright red and yellow like the magma of volcanoes. With another roar, she breathed fire toward Asha covering the remaining half of the arena. Her fire was scorching hot that nobody could have survived it. Even though the emperor suggested a friendly match between contestants, it seemed like this contemptuous Elder Druid had completely forgotten that and desired to kill Asha instead.

Smoke and fire filled up the surrounding making it hard for anyone to see what happened. The crowd grew silent as they waited to see what happened to Asha. Did she manage to survive the fire or would they be seeing her skeletons instead?—if there would even be a skeleton to see?

A few moments after, the fire and smoke dissipated, revealing the untouched, unscathed, and unbothered Asha. She was just there—in the exact same position she was in earlier. Though, by that time, she was already sitting in the air as if there was a solid chair lifting her body. Around her was a spherical barrier made of transparent ice and snow. 

The crowd marveled at what they saw. To add to it, Asha was quite beautiful to look at, especially at that moment. With her enchanting visage and her bluish-white battledress, she appeared like a fairy inside a crystal snow globe amidst a burning surrounding. Two elemental spirits were beside her. One was the very much fired-up Aqua, and the other was Glacies—Asha’s ice spirit. She looked similar to Aqua except her hair was straight and shorter, and her dress was made of the most intricate snowflakes.

“Thank you, Aqua and Glacies,” Asha said and smiled at them.

“Haaaah… You’re welcome, master,” Glacies replied, still yawning. Her voice was cute but she spoke rather slowly and sounded sleepy. “Why are you fighting a dragon, master?”

“Didn’t I tell you already, Glacies?” Aqua sighed. “You weren’t listening again, were you? How many times do I have to tell you NOT to sleep when someone’s talking to you?”

“Oh? You told me?”

“Yes, I did! Asha joined a tournament—that is your why.”

“I see. Well, many blessings to you, master. I’m sure this tournament will be easy for you,” Glacies turned to Asha and smiled. “Now, if you can just allow me to return to the Spirit’s Realm so I can sleep some more, that will be great. I’m still… haaaah… sleepy.”

Asha chuckled hearing Glacies’ lazy remark. She had always been like that to the point that Asha wasn’t sure anymore if she was still cultivating in the Spirit’s Realm or merely hibernating all the time.

“I’d love to, but we need to finish this match first.”

“I see. Then, can I sleep after?”

“Yes, you can. As much as you want.”

“Okay,” Glacies slowly nodded. Turning to Aqua she said, “Aqua, let’s kill that dragon as soon as possible.”

Aqua grimaced at her. “Look at you suddenly fired up because you can sleep again! Ugh. Seriously. Why is it that Asha’s other familiars are a bunch of lazy a—“

“No bad words, Aqua. Glacies is still young, you know.”

“Tsk! Fine. Anyway, let’s kill this dragon who’s not even a real dragon.”

“Yeah!” Glacies shouted in agreement but even her shout sounded sleepy.

On the other hand, Aqua’s tiny eyes glinted menacingly in excitement. She glared deviously at the mighty dragon in front of them.

The crowd burst out in laughter seeing a tiny elemental spirit trying to taunt a huge dragon. If only they had seen how Aqua easily wiped out the monsters in the dark forest, perhaps they wouldn’t have seen it as a joke.

“So what’s the plan, Aqua?” Glacies asked. “I suggest you do the fighting and I will just be here with the master, casting a strong ice barrier. How does that sound?”

“Sounds very lazy, Glacies!” Aqua barked at her. “Come with me! Let’s freeze this dragon like a chilled piece of meat!”

Glacies turned to Asha and bawled her eyes, trying to convince her to stop Aqua and go along with her suggestion instead. But Asha simply chuckled at her.

“I’m sorry, Glacies. I promised Aqua last night that she can fight to her heart’s content today.”

“Oh… Too bad. I guess we just really need to finish this fast.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“In that case… I might use a lot more spiritual energy than usual. Is that okay?”

“Oh really?” Asha’s eyes glimmered. “Sure, go ahead! Use as much as you want. I’ll release my temporary seal for you.”

“Thank you, master.”

And so, Asha did as mentioned. Having six different elemental spirits as her familiars that she had to constantly feed with her spiritual energy, Asha had to make certain divisions separated by seals in her spiritual core where she kept all her energies.

Each person had one spiritual core that determined the capacity of spiritual energy they could take from nature. If it could be measured in numbers, one average person could have as much as a hundred points capacity in their core. Some had thousands which were among those considered with great aptitude for magic, while others had none and were the so-called non-magical folks.

As for Asha, her spiritual core had a capacity amounting to three hundred and fifty thousand—and counting, since she could still increase it if she cultivated more. This was why she could contract several elemental spirits at once and still had the energy to use for her own highly advanced magic.

For each familiar, she had reserved ten thousand points, except for Aqua and Solum who had fifty thousand each, totaling one hundred forty thousand points. For the remaining, she equally divided them into three categories. The first category was for emergency reserve; the second was for familiars she was yet to contract with, or a surplus her current familiars could use if they needed more; and the third was for her daily consumption even though she rarely used it.

“Second seal—Surplus, unlock!” Asha whispered to herself.

As she said those words, one seal in a form of a transparent barrier unlocked itself inside Asha’s spiritual core, allowing any of her familiars to feed on the spiritual energy in that compartment as much as it contained which was a whooping total of seventy thousand points—such a huge difference for Glacies who usually fed on ten thousand points only.

“Woooow… So much energy,” Glacies’ sleepy eyes sparkled. “Thank you, master. I will make sure not to waste a single drop of it.”

“Hey come on!” Aqua called her. “What are you waiting for, Glacies? Let’s go!”

And so, Aqua and Glacies went out of the barrier and confronted the dragon. Turned out, she was yapping non-stop while they were talking to each other earlier. And since they didn’t bother listening to her, this aggravated her more.

“It seems like you’re keen on insulting me, human!” Wynna roared again. “Using these tiny spirits to fight me? Have you lost your mind?!”

Asha turned in the dragon’s direction for a bit and smirked tauntingly at her without saying anything. Then, she took out a book from her spatial storage, created a swing made of flowery vines, and lounged comfortably on it as she read the book she just took. It was a crystal clear statement from Asha telling her “I don’t need to lift a finger to defeat you.”

“W-What the… URGH!”

“I personally think, you’re the one who lost your mind, stupid fake dragon!” Aqua shouted back. “You should know that when it comes to fighting with magic, size NEVER mattered. What are you, a pea-brain?”

At these words, Wynna finally lost it. She unfolded her gigantic wings and started stomping on the ground, breathing fire as she did like a lunatic dragon. With her every stomp, the whole coliseum shook and the crowd started to worry. The barrier that protected the crowd was still there and protected them from the fire breath, but if the coliseum itself was to collapse, they would have to evacuate as soon as possible. And to think she did that when the emperor and empress were present!

The guard knights and the emperor’s guards alerted themselves. They turned to Emperor Vasilias, waiting for a command if they should start evacuating everyone or order the Master of Ceremonies to stop the match. But Emperor Vasilias simply stood up from his seat and carefully observed Asha. Seeing she was nonchalantly reading a book, he sighed in relief and waved his hands down, signaling everyone to calm down.

As they did, a sudden hailstorm swept past them and surrounded the hysterical dragon until it got a hold of it and lifted it in the air. A hailstorm that was so strong it could lift a thousand-pound dragon! And beneath it were the two tiny elemental spirits, Aqua and Glacies, controlling the hailstorm as if it was the most natural thing for them.

Witnessing that, the crowd fell silent once more.